While the nation boils over abortion rights, Supreme Court attention has turned toward regulating campaign finance law and, in particular, the use of pre-election issue ads. Will the ads stay or go?

Congress says they should go. The Supreme Court has yet to decide.

Earlier, in 2003, the court upheld the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, in a five-to-four decision. The act seeks to regulate campaign financing, which Congress has been attempting to limit for the last four years.

This time, the law’s restrictions have been challenged. The Supreme Court will now hear arguments concerning whether or not the law unfairly limits groups’ rights to lobby Congress about certain specific issues. The verdict will have a major effect on the upcoming 2008 elections and candidates’ interests.

One of the major components of the act restricts certain groups—businesses, unions, and special-interest groups—from using their general funds to sponsor “issue ads.” Such ads use candidates’ names, either positively or negatively, prior to elections. Many argue that “issue ads” are tantamount to veiled attacks on individuals.

No candidate’s name should be mentioned in an issue ad on the radio or on television within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, the act states. This provision is also part of Congress’ solution to the issue of “sham ads.” It forbids all interest groups from running corporate-funded ads, which allegedly have skirted all other rules to influence elections in the closing weeks of campaigns.

Organizations and corporate bodies, however, may raise money for ads through financially constrained political action committees, which is an onerous task since PAC funding must comply with federal limits and disclosure requirements.

Incidentally, a lower court relaxed the law’s restrictions on issue ads last year. In its ruling, the court said that “groups may mention candidates by name in ads as long as they are trying to influence public policy rather than sway an election.” It sided with Wisconsin Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that ran ads during the 2004 campaign imploring voters not to “filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees.”

Such issue ads indirectly influence voters because they make remarks about candidates. Thus, the McCain-Feingold Act restricts issue ads. But Wisconsin Right to Life argues that this throttles free-speech rights.

James Bopp, Jr., who will argue for Wisconsin Right to Life, said he is “merely looking to the court to fulfill a promise of its 2003 ruling [and] to see what the court said would be given meaning—that there are genuine issue ads that should be protected.”

There’s a new Supreme Court this time around, and the 2008 elections are just around the corner--an interesting turn of events, indeed!